Friday, July 4, 2008

3D Cartoon Character

This summer I am taking a 3D Cartoon Character Animation class. This is in stark contrast to the naturalism and realism that's pushed in most of the classes. This is challenging, but fun. Below is essentially blocking 2 for our first assignment. We had to take a 2D clip, and transform it into a 3D animation. I chose a few seconds from a Tom and Jerry short. This is one of the most difficult rigs I've had to work with, but once I got the hang of it, it proved to be really powerful. There are just an insane number of controls. It allows us to really push squash and stretch, it's just really tough for it to not deform like crap. And I even had to make some modifications to the tail to make it functional. Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be a bitch session about the rig. Anyway, here's blocking 2. I still need to fix some balance issues when he's crouched down, and I think I can push some of the poses even more exaggerated.